Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Some Notes and Domino 8.5.3 Benefits You May Not Know

In no specific order of importance here are some things I found on 8.5.3 Notes, Domino and Traveler.
Traveler must be searched separately from Notes and Domino if you are downloading it from IBM's websites. Wish they had it all together.

The Admin Client, at least for me, is REALLY fast now. (Just my view, your mileage may vary)
Designer client, is now really slow, it is always waiting for something to close. Must know I'm an Admin. (Just my view, your mileage may vary)
Notes client gets to open faster and cleaner than before.

Unread mail can now be ANY color, with a color picker found in File-Preferences-Fonts and Colors.
You also get the ability to change the read emails colors and set the size of your mail view font.

Preferences have been expanded in many cases to include more details upfront or than previously shown.
As one example, the accounts provides more details now.
Sametime embedded is now ST 8.5.1 so you have more options to work with and review as well.

Mail notifications can also include a slide-in summary type now if you wish.

Server console shows more threads and details than prior server like it's in debug mode. Someone said there is a reference in release notes about this. I didn't find the reference.
From Support regarding the logging changes:

"Starting with 853 the notes.ini paramater Debug_threadid is added automatically to the server and set to 1. The debug thread id is very useful when troubleshooting issues as it makes it easy to:
1. Grep for specific errors based on the task
2. Allows to see which task is throwing the error
If you would like to disable this option you can do so by setting debug_threadid to 0. To do so you can issue the command "Set config debug_threadid=0"
The debug is dynamic so the changes will take effect immediately."

Also the server seems to shut down faster for us but your mileage may vary.

Now is also the time to get your entitlements for Connections Profiles and Files setup. With a growing population of Domino shops looking at Connections, this is an excellent way to get a taste of it all. If you need help, just ask.

Lastly, if your install fails, try this:

Lotus Notes Install Cleanup Executable (NICE)

You can use the supplied Notes Install Cleanup Executable (NICE) tool to clean up a failed installation, failed uninstall or failed upgrade. You can also use the tool to uninstall an existing version of Notes, and clean up extraneous files, before performing an upgrade installation. The tool is available for Lotus Notes 8.x installations on supported Windows platforms only and must be run as an administrator.